corder (9/29/2009)[hr
I have no idea how common it is but we had been running our application for about 10 years before it came up so we had to come up with a solution. And I think, non-accountant that I am, that every few years there is an extra week thrown in. I mention this in my article and andyscott mentions it, too.
A further question I have on a table implementation (yes, I think it's a great idea but I'm pondering things) is what about shifting the start date of the year. Meaning, if you build the table where year 2008 starts on 1/6/2008 then the table's data is fine. But what happens if the accountants decide that the year should start on the first Sunday after Sept 1st? Then another accountant says it should start on the first Tuesday after July 1st? I'm thinking you'd need more key values in the table but I'm curious if anyone has any great implementation ideas.
I think it depends on the nature of your company's business - if business is very geared to a weekly cycle, then the imposition of the "calendar month" as a "period" is too inflexible. Hence - if your business still wishes to report on a pseudo-monthly cycle, ie twelve times in a year - the need for fiscal periods each of an integral number of weeks. But the definition of the year itself - in terms of when it starts and ends and, in some instances, what any interim points are - is (at least for a UK-based, publically listed company) strictly controlled, since it is a requirement of its registration on the stock market. So its not just down to the accountants to choose!
Irrespective of whether you 4-4-5 or any other method of weekly-based reporting, there will be a requirement to insert a 53rd week from time to time. This comes about because of (a) 52 weeks of 7 days is one day short of a normal year of 365 days and (b) leap years add a further day every (nearly) four years too. So after 6 years, you'll have had an extra 6 days from (a) and, likely, an extra 1 day from (b), and you'll need to cater for a 53rd week. Depending on timing (ie where the leap years are - or aren't!) this may come after the fifth year or may be delayed until the seventh - but every sixth year is what you should plan for. If your business still wants to report over 12 periods, then one of the existing periods will need to have the extra week added.
But even if you do have to have two (or more) sets of cycles (for instance, if you are doing reporting for business with different year start/end dates) its easy to extend a calendar table to contain multiple sets of fiscal period data by having distinct sets of columns for each set of cycles.